Ken Hall: Time to alter scope of fight on fracking

Thursday

Aug 30, 2012 at 2:00 AM

Any lingering hope that New York would ban hydraulic fracturing evaporated over the weekend with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $6 million grant for regulations that will make drilling as safe and environmentally sound as possible.

Ken Hall

Any lingering hope that New York would ban hydraulic fracturing evaporated over the weekend with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $6 million grant for regulations that will make drilling as safe and environmentally sound as possible.

That puts the mayor in the same camp as the governor and the president, all of them fans of using more natural gas because it produces less pollution than oil or coal, because we have a lot of it and because they are convinced that with enough enforcement, there is no need to worry about pollution.

By accepting the mayor's millions and other similar grants, the Environmental Defense Fund has sent a signal that this phase of the fight, the attempt to ban hydrofracking because it is dirty and dangerous, is over. Now, it's on to the inevitable second phase, the fights over rules.

Those who continue to object to any drilling anywhere are wasting their time. What they need to do now is take Bloomberg at his word that he really wants to make sure the laws in all states considering fracking are strong. And they need to keep working town by town to pass local legislation limiting or outlawing the practice as an extension of local zoning control.

Either approach has a much better chance of success than continued appeals based on science. A combination of the two could reach the same ultimate goal, making fracking a practice allowed only where it is wanted and only where the rules make environmental damage unlikely.

Since the time long ago when the mayor and others decided that fracking was too dangerous for the watershed that supplies New York City but could conceivably be allowed elsewhere, this issue has been more about politics than pollution. It is absurd, even indefensible, for an elected official to say that his water is more important and his watershed more fragile than yours, but that is what Bloomberg has long maintained. Had he said all along that the protection for the watershed would set the standard for the state, New York would have disappeared from the hydrofracking map because there really is no way to offer that kind of protection with that kind of guarantee.

But he was willing to say that New York has two types of water supplies — those worth exempting and those not worth the bother. Now the question is how much of a bother he really wants all these rules to be.

The preferred list is long, including disclosure of chemicals going into the ground, safe treatment of the stuff that come back up, safeguards that will protect wells, tests that will prove that the safeguards are working and money that drilling companies will commit up front to repair the inevitable damage all those trucks will inflict on rural roads and fields.

We have known for a while that the mayor thinks his water needs more protection than ours. Now we need to see how much protection he, the governor and the president are willing to buy.